“The deplorable situation that Diab is experiencing in France — held without trial for years, in spite of numerous judicial decisions indicating he should be bailed or even released has been well documented elsewhere, including by Amnesty International. However, what Canadians need to understand is that this situation is a direct, even logical, result of the current state of Canadian extradition law…

“If an extradition request cannot be turned aside on the basis of a case as weak as that against Hassan Diab, it is difficult to imagine one that will be… Hassan Diab should be repatriated and our extradition law should be reformed.”

On Wednesday August 9, 2017, Hassan Diab will have spent 1,000 days in prison in France, despite documented and compelling evidence of his innocence.

A French investigating judge found consistent evidence supporting Hassan’s innocence, and concluded that Hassan was not in France in October 1980. Hassan was ordered released on bail SIX times by various French judges. However, the French prosecutor appealed each time, and the Court of Appeal overturned every release order due to the political climate in France. To this day, Hassan remains locked up in a French prison cell, 20 hours a day, deprived of his freedom and torn from his family and home in Canada.

Therefore we ask you, please, on Wednesday August 9, the 1,000th day of Hassan’s unjust imprisonment, to telephone the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and insist politely but firmly that the Prime Minister intervene with the French government and ask for Hassan’s immediate release and return to his home in Canada.

We want to have as many of these calls made as possible, coming from all over the country and beyond, all on the same day (August 9). How would the PM be able to ignore this?

(If you are unable to make the call on August 9, please make it whenever it is convenient for you.)

“The evidence against Diab is shaky at best. It appeared to rest on handwriting analyses that experts had discredited. The French authorities had tried to include “secret intelligence” from unidentified sources — evidence that Canadian authorities threw out. There is evidence that Diab was in Lebanon, not Paris, on the day of the attack. Fingerprints at the scene of the crime don’t seem to match those of Diab.

Robert Maranger, the Ontario Superior Court judge who agreed to the extradition, even admitted that ‘the prospects of conviction in the context of a fair trial seem unlikely.’

Nine years later, with absolutely no movement in sight, it is clear that Hassan Diab is not receiving justice by Canadian standards. This must change.

It is time for Canadian authorities to insist that France take proper judicial action or send him home. By forcing Diab into legal purgatory, Canada is seriously undermining its commitment to due process — one of the bedrock responsibilities of a democratic society to its citizens…”

“Justin Trudeau once proclaimed that ‘A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.’ But if the Canadian’s name is Hassan Diab, the government would prefer not to speak up. That’s no longer good enough…

“Amnesty, which believes his detention contravenes human rights norms, has written to Trudeau, Freeland and Justice Minister Jody Wilson­Raybould asking them to try to secure Diab’s release on bail…

“[T]he legal evidence that he committed one seems to be slowly unravelling and the time being taken by the French to figure things out is unconscionable…

“Canada can do better than maintain a shy silence. Trudeau must insist on concrete action one way or another from France. In democratic countries, we don’t hold people in jail indefinitely without trial or freedom.”